Definitions
by KADH
Summary: During a dark and stormy night in Paris, Sara meditates on life, love and the choices she's made.  Takes place post episode 1107 "Bump and Grind," circa mid-November 2011.
1. One: The Scars We Wear

**Definitions**

During a dark and stormy night in Paris, Sara meditates on life, love and the choices she's made.

_Takes place post episode 1107 "Bump and Grind," circa mid-November 2011._

_For M - with all the hope I possess for us both._

xxxxxxx_  
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"Experience is not what happens to a man.

It's what a man does with what happens to him,"

Aldus Huxley

xxxxxxx

**One: The Scars We Wear**

**SARA:**

You hardly notice them.

**RAY:**

Scars?

**SARA**:

Hmm. Of course some scars heal faster than others.

- Episode 1107: Bump and Grind

xxxxxxx

_**Sara**_

Awake.

I am awake. Abrupt. Wide-eyed. Breathless.

_Dream,_ is my first thought. Or more precisely, nightmare. _Just another bad dream. _It wouldn't be the first - or the last.

But no, not this time.

Only after my heart stops thudding in my ears and my ragged breath quiets, do I hear it and know.

That rapid rattle ricocheting against the slate overhead, that's what's roused me: rain, pure and simple.

Though this is not some simple little fall of rain, an ordinary autumn shower. It is rage and roar, blow and crack, thunder and boom, full of a sound and fury certainly not signifying nothing.

At least this time it only takes a moment for me to locate where I am. That I am not struggling to get out from under that damn car. That I am safe. _Home_. Home being for the last several days at least, not that Vegas condo of yours which we now share, but our Latin Quarter _appartement parisien._

And with you here asleep in the bed beside me and Hank snoring at our feet, there's no reason to be afraid. I know this. None at all. Except that doesn't seem to keep that not so distant rumble of thunder from waking me from a dead sleep.

At least it's only at night. It can rain all it wants during the day and nothing. Well, apart from that aching twinge where the bones refused.

But there is just something about the dark and the rat-a-tat-tat and the rush of water in the gutters and the shattering crash and resultant roll which wake me into that struggling suffocating chest-tightening heart-pounding mind-whirling paralyzing breathlessness.

Turns out I am not the only one disquieted by the weather. You may not wake, but I feel you shift in your sleep, rolling over to snuggle up against me; your arm close around my waist.

It's a well-welcomed embrace. For one, you have in the course of the night managed per usual to commandeer and then abscond with pretty much most of the covers and Paris in November _est définitivement froide_. That and I hadn't realized just how painfully tight I had drawn myself up or even that I was holding my breath until I relaxed into you.

And at this, your grasp tightens in a way I know from all our years together is equal measures gentle, tender protectiveness; a seeking and not just giving of comfort. And despite the weather and the weariness, I cannot suppress a slight smile. One which only grows as I feel your fingers edge beneath my shirt.

Your thumb absently grazes along an old scar, a childhood artifact from so far back I honestly mostly forget it's even there. Like I told Ray not even a week before, you really do _hardly notice them after a while_ - scars. At least the outside ones.

In the beginning they hurt. They itch. They ache. Stand out. Or you think they do. So much so sometimes you're certain everyone can see them no matter how well you try to keep them covered. But after a while, they hurt a little less. Itch a little less. Ache a little less. Stand out a little less. At some point, sooner or later, which always feels way more later than sooner, you stop thinking of them. There's only the mirror to remind you. And only when you look.

But like their bearers, scars have secrets and stories of their own. Except unlike that tattoo of mine which you often ask about, you never did about that scar or the others, even if there was no way they would or could have escaped your notice. Your eyes, your fingers took them in well enough. It wasn't disinterest though, this lapse in your usual inquisitiveness. Still your questions you kept to yourself, waiting with all that sometimes-infuriating patience of yours, for me to tell you in my own time. When I was ready. Which turned out to be mid-afternoon one day in the middle of that first winter after we'd started sleeping together.

I remember us all curled up, content in enjoying the quiet and the company when your fingers momentarily lingered there and I just blurted it all out, as if it were the most natural and normal thing in the world for me to do, to talk about what and how it happened.

Not that it was all that long a tale to tell. Mostly a matter of wrong place, wrong time, wrong end of an argument and a broken beer bottle. Accident or no, didn't keep me from needing more than a dozen stitches. Though not a big deal really and certainly not my first - or last - trip to the emergency room either. But_ c'est la vie,_ right?

And it wasn't as if you weren't without ones of your own - scars - the inside as well as the outside ones. The latter frequently proving, as they usually did, far easier to dissect and discuss and dismiss. But over the last six years or so, I suppose we've swapped our share of stories and secrets and scars. And it's helped, that sharing, however strange it was at the start for both of us after near lifetimes of keeping them like most things, so close to the chest.

What I remember most about that day though was you telling me _When you love someone, you have to love all of them, accept all of them, scars and fears - _

_And bugs, _I laughed.

_And all, _you finished.

And they weren't just words. I've had plenty of well-meant ones from well-meaning people over the years. But you, you meant them.

_Scars and fears and all. _Took me too long to realize just how much you meant it. But then I was too busy dodging ghosts and fighting my own demons and being afraid. Afraid of self-destructing, of repeating history, of all that had happened and all that could have.

That's no way to live.

Nearly took me too long to realize that, too.

_To be continued in _A (not so) Little Fall of Rain


	2. Two: A not so Little Fall of Rain

**Two: A (not so) Little Fall of Rain**

A little fall of rain

Can hardly hurt me now.

You're here, that's all I need to know.

And you will keep me safe

And you will keep me close

And rain will make the flowers grow.

"A Little Fall of Rain," _Les Misérables_, Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel

xxxxxxx

I remember it. That night_ I _finally made a decision.

Not unlike tonight, it was _une nuit sombre et orageuse _or more aptly _una noche oscura y tormentosa. _Dark and stormy in any language. However the simple single room _cabina _nestled between the rainforest and Costa Rica's southern Pacific coast couldn't have proved any more disparate.

It being the rainforest, one would naturally expect it to rain. But it doesn't, at least not so much during the dry season months between November and April. But that night, it was as if the heavens had opened and held nothing back. The fat raindrops splattered through the canopy of trees and clattered on the tin roof with such rapidity they drowned out the regular crash and roll of the waves along the shore. Only the not so distant deep grumble of thunder raged louder.

No wonder I woke gasping, heart thumping and breathless then too. And feeling for all the world as if the darkness was collapsing in on me again. That I was back under that car. Trapped with the water rising.

Thank goodness it is only at night. When the panic comes. When the rain triggers the memories and the memories, the nightmares and the nightmares, the fear.

Yet it's no reason to wake you, particularly with an early start ahead of us the next morning, so I slipped out of bed and out the door to retreat under the covered porch in hopes of a little air and some slight measure of composure.

But before long there was the sudden warmth of that shawl, the one you'd only just given me a few days before, being draped over my shoulders. The gesture's much appreciated, even if I hadn't registered being cold. However the brush of your wedding ringed hand along my skin proved far more warming.

You needn't ask as your fingers searched for mine in the dark what had woken me. You already knew. We both did. Knew too what the other was thinking so well there was no need to speak of it. But we did. For the first time really. About that night out in the desert and the day that followed.

And maybe it was a strange time and place to talk about it, particularly when we never really ever did. Wasn't exactly romantic I suppose. Good for us, good for us both, even if not the things honeymoons are usually made of.

But then perhaps sometimes there are just some things easier to say with the darkness between you. And some things that just need to be said.

You know, dying alone out there in the desert hadn't been what I'd been most afraid of out there. I'd been far more scared I'd never see you again. And I didn't want to die like that. Never seeing you again.

And then, then there you were, there the first thing when I opened my eyes. It was - Even now I still don't possess the words for that moment.

When I confessed as much to you, you drew me close, enfolding me in the way only you ever could and did and we simply held each other for a long time listening to the rain.

We ended up talking for hours, long after it stopped. Until dawn broke and the sky was bright and blue and beautiful once more. That morning like no other I can remember, smelled of rain and damp earth, greenness and life.

And I don't know the exact moment that night when I finally made that decision. I only knew that as we stood there watching the world wake, I had.

I'd finally made the decision to choose hope.

Took me long enough.

Once, not all that long after you just showed up out of the blue one day in the middle of the rainforest, you told me that in the end, there are really only two choices in life: you can live in hope or you can live in fear.

Fear was easier, worse, but easier; hope harder as it frequently requires a measure of faith I have to admit I don't always possess.

But a life lived in fear isn't just a half-life but an unlived one. You told me that, too. For fear makes us powerless to live. It is hope which gives us the strength enough to try.

That night, it was time. Time to stop being afraid. Certainly time to stop being a hypocrite. For I'd chided - more than chided - you for _not making a decision_. Except I hadn't either, not even after all that time away. Sure, I'd managed to change the outward trappings of my life; the inner ones not so much. It takes a lot more than a change in occupation or location, making that choice to choose hope and decide to go with the living.

Amazing how you proved far quicker to heed and take the advice I'd given Brass nearly five years before. But then what was it Oscar Wilde always used to say? "The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself."

But that night I decided I didn't want to live in fear anymore. I was tired of being scared, being angry, forever fighting all the old fights and mostly myself. Tired of reopening the same wounds, probing the same hurts, cataloging the same scars. Of being so afraid of self-destruction. Repeating history. Of what had been and what could be.

Maybe there wasn't - isn't - a murder gene, but I know enough psychiatry and genetics to know precisely how much higher a chance you have of developing schizophrenia if a parent has it. The numbers don't lie.

Although the numbers aren't nearly as worrying as what that potentiality might mean. I might lose my temper and far too often than I know is good for me. But really losing control, losing one's mind and one's reason, losing oneself, it's unthinkable. It was hard enough watching it from the outside; I can't even begin to imagine what it's like inside.

Except inconceivability makes it all the more scary, rather than less. Makes you cling to reason and rationality all the more in fear of one day losing them. And then losing everything that matters most to you.

After Natalie, after Warrick, I really did fear that. Feared self-destructing. Feared destroying the only home I've ever really had. And we both know how adept I can be at self-destruction.

You know, or at least I hope you know, although now that I think about it, I'm not so sure you do, that when I told you I couldn't stay, that I had to go, it had nothing to do with you. That it didn't mean you weren't enough. It was because I wasn't.

What I didn't realize then was screw genetics, screw nurture, you still have a choice. DNA wasn't destiny. And all the science, the predictions, the propensities, what they all fail to take into account is the human capacity for hope and change. And love.

You taught me that too.

Of course none of these things can cure conditions, change the diagnosis, but when it comes to the prognosis, they make all the difference in the world.

Ultimately, hope and love isn't about the absence of fear, but the willingness to hazard to share it.

We grow up thinking there is shame in needing and asking for help. That it's a sign of weakness, of a deficiency in ourselves. That we are somehow lacking. When it is just the opposite. Admitting you need help, that you can't do it all on your own, takes far more courage and strength.

After that night out in the desert, I thought, pigheadedly maintained is more like, that I had to do it all on my own: exorcise all my ghosts and demons, fight my own fight and fight it alone like I'd always had.

You know for someone who's supposedly pretty smart, I can be monumentally stupid about the really important things.

For I was wrong. Dead wrong. And it almost cost me everything. And most of all it almost cost me you.

And maybe we don't deserve to be loved, maybe we don't deserve to be happy, but thankfully we don't always get what we deserve. Sometimes we get better.

It took me until that night to really grasp that no matter how bad, how broken our lives might be, you don't have to throw it all away. And you don't have to do it alone. That is what we're here for after all: to help pick up each other's pieces. Even if sometimes you risk getting a little hurt along the way.

And there are still those battles I have to face. You can't fight them for me any more than I can fight them for you, but now at least we fight them together.

Of course that doesn't mean things are easy. They're just different.

Nor is any of it as simple as a single choice. It's not like you can decide it once and then it's all over and done with and you never have to do it again. Nothing in life is ever _that_ easy.

Some days are certainly a hellava lot harder than others.

And even now, there are times when my frustrations or all the things I do not understand, even those old ghosts get the best of me. I still lose perspective and my temper. Screw up. Storm off. Regret it when I've had the chance to cool off. Some things don't change. And there are still the nightmares, insomnia, hurts and heartache and the cases that cut you to the quick. No, it doesn't mean I'm never afraid. There are plenty of things out there that will and should scare the hell out of any reasonable person.

But as for living in fear, no. I choose not to do that anymore. No matter how hard it is; it's worth it.


	3. Three: Determinations

**Three: Determinations**

"One cannot spend forever sitting and solving the mysteries of one's history,"

_Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid_, Lemony Snicket

xxxxxxx

You know it's funny how the things we fear will define us, don't, while the ones we never thought to imagine, do.

I spent the better part of my life treating work like that. Like it was everything. Not just my whole life, but _all_ of me.

_Looking for validation in inappropriate place_s indeed.

But it sure beat the alternative.

It was bad enough growing up as the girl whose mother murdered her father. The looks, all those whispers, the murmurs I wasn't supposed to hear, but did. Foster care wasn't exactly a picnic either. So yeah, I took the first chance I got to leave that life far behind me.

I suppose, too, that part of me believed that if I could keep it secret, safe under lock and key, it would be like it never happened. Or at least it didn't matter, didn't have to matter. The past would be the past, gone, done, over. I didn't have to be that girl anymore.

Besides, it wasn't as if I hadn't spent my whole life living with secrets and lies anyway. What was one more? No one need ever know.

So I told no one really until you. Not the errant boyfriend, the rare friend, not even those I've had the privilege to work with now for the better part of a decade. That chat with Julian Santiago last month is probably as close as I've ever come to talking about any of it at the lab.

Rational or not, I guess I fear even now after all these years, all we've seen and done and experienced together, it will change things, them knowing. That I will suddenly be seen differently, treated differently. Thought of as weak and damaged and broken, needing to be handled with all the kid glove care of the well intentioned yet personally uninitiated. To be tiptoed around, pitied. Labeled and treated as a victim.

I never wanted that. I still don't.

And I've never really liked that word: _victim_. Yet that's what we call them, even me, the people we meet at crime scenes, the ones splayed open on autopsy tables, the ones horrible things happen to. _The victim _as if that is what ultimately defines them.

I don't want to be thought of like that.

I'm a survivor. I survived it.

The schizophrenic mother. The abusive alcoholic father. The yelling. The screaming. The trips to the emergency room. That night. The group homes and foster care shuffle. I survived it. Not entirely unscathed. But I did.

And nobody gets to take that away from me.

Not when I came too close not to.

Brass was right, there are far more problems than solutions to be found at the bottom of a bottle. Drinking was never the answer, but it was pretty good at helping you forget the question, if only for a little while. And forgetting was definitely something I wanted to do. To no longer have to feel the thousand pricks and pulls of memory. To not have to face all my own unanswered and unanswerable questions.

Okay, so much for always choosing hope over fear. But then as you have more than once sagely maintained, _we are_ _all_ _works in progress_.

Except I should know better. Yes, things changed after I told you. But not as I'd feared or worried or even expected. Not in big ways or even ways I can put a finger on. But they changed.

But god, did it feel good to finally tell someone. To tell you.

And there was no judgment. No recoil. Quite the opposite in fact.

You didn't say much. But then even for a man of many words, I knew even in those days that your silences frequently spoke louder, deeper than any words ever could, even if you later confessed as to wanting them that day. You didn't.

You reached out, literally reached out. Which on its own was so rare a thing back then. That simple touch, its silent reassurance that you were there, it meant more than all the trite, well-worn platitudes I'd heard during my years in the system.

I doubt you knew, know, just how much a difference that day made. How close I'd really been then on the brink of destroying not just my career, but my life.

You came and stayed. And dared to love me anyway. Scars and fears and all. The past, too.

Good thing as the past can't be undone, remade. Nor can it just be set aside or forgotten or made to disappear.

Like I told Ray, we don't always get to decide what happens to us. But what we do with it, that we do. We get to choose that.

And it really did take too long, cost too much, nearly cost a whole lot more, before I learned the truth in that.

Before I'd finally been able to face the mirror all the scars on show and know that they are a part of me, but only a part, not all of me. That ultimately we are far more than just the sum of our broken parts.

Ernest Hemmingway may have been a bore as well as a brash, habitually self-important sexist pig, who often didn't know shit, but he was right in this: "We are all a little stronger in our broken places."

And I've been lucky. So very lucky. Though I suppose most people wouldn't regard me as such if they knew everything I've tried to keep inside. But I am.

As a CSI I've seen so much. What wrong choices really cost. What pain and loss mean. That the world can be hard, cold, harsh, full of pain. But -

I am startled out of this reverie by the sudden rapid staccato outside.

The storm seems rather to be gaining than waning.

I shiver. Though the momentary surge of panic, is just that, momentary. More and more the whirl of memory, the flash of old sensations are only that, brief not lasting, thankfully _too like the lightning, which doth cease to be/Ere one can say 'It lightens.'_

Still there is the soft sound, the murmur of_ Sara_ and your grasp tightens even more, reminding me that I am not the only one to be worried by storms and the nightmares they bring.

I sigh, cover your hand with mine and settle deeper into you and you into me.

And before long, peace and calmness come again. But then I never feel as safe as I do when I'm with you.

The French have this expression: _bien dans sa peau_. Which literally means _well in one's own skin_. And I feel that now, like I haven't before. It's a strange yet welcome development. Much like most of my life these days.

Not that you will ever - _and I mean ever_ - get me to actually admit it, but I really don't mind all that much that no matter how often you introduce me as _Sara Sidle,_ your French colleagues still insist on calling me _Mme Grissom_.

Or perhaps it is more that I rather like being your wife. Surprising as that seems. And still seems to strike everyone else for some reason or other.

But then even only a few years ago, I never would have imagined it: marriage, being a wife.

For we may not get much say in the families we are born into. It's little more than an accident of genetics. But the families we make along the way, they are another story entirely. And you and I are for better or worse, family in our own perhaps strange way.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

And no matter how rare an occurrence it frequently proves to be of late, it's certainly far easier not to be afraid with you in the bed beside me, softly snoring, as you are often wont to do. But then I've always slept easier, rested easier, breathed easier with you.

So I do.


End file.
